SOLITAIRE 891 
almost every bone? of the Solitaire’s skeleton, it is not easy to 
picture its appearance in our imagination. Whatever be its source, 
the figure given by him, and here reproduced as the only one 
professing any originality, must be a caricature,* for it wholly wants 
the beauty which he says was so characteristic of the bird. All 
that can be said with certainty seems to be that it had nothing of 
the clumsiness nor the prodigious beak of the Dedo, while the head 
was rather flat than elevated at the top. The largest males 
weighed from 40 to 50 lbs. and must have stood fully 2 feet 9 
inches high ; the females were shorter by at least six inches. The 
general colour of the former was brownish-grey, darker on the 
back; while the latter varied from blonde to brunette, with the 
swelling breast much whiter. The eyes were black, and according 
to the anonymous author of the felation before cited the frontal 
band was like black velvet, and black indeed it appears in Leguat’s 
figure, though he is commonly understood to say that it was of a 
tan colour, but his language seems open to the meaning that it was 
the bill which was of that tint. The flank feathers were thick and 
rounded at the end like shells, but generally the plumage must have 
been soft (“ni plumes ni poils”) and it was kept extremely neat. 
So much for the appearance of the birds, of their habits it may be 
said that they were generally found singly or in pairs, but the 
young, of which only one seems to have been hatched yearly, 
accompanied its parents for some time. The nest was a heap of 
palm-leaves, a foot and a half high, and therein a single egg was 
laid, both parents incubating it in turn. The male birds, were very 
pugnacious, and the number of bones that had been broken and 
united during life contained in the collections brought to this 
country is very considerable, shewing the effects of the cestus-like 
armature of the wing. ‘The quarrels were no doubt between rival 
birds, and they indulged in curious gesticulations, whirling round 
20 or 30 times in succession, during which time they made 
a loud noise with their wings. It would seem too that between 
. the time of Leguat and that of the later observers the birds had 
learnt to resent injurious treatment by biting. 
1 The hyoids, the tip of the wing and the tail are, I think, the only exceptions. 
? Leguat’s figures are neither works of art nor of authority, and no doubt 
contributed to the ill repute under which he so long laboured. His marvellous 
‘*Géant” is obviously taken from an engraving by Francis Barlow (cf Rowley, 
Orn. Miscell. ii. p. 182), which is itself but a poor copy of one by Adrian Collaert 
(Proc. Zool. Soc. 1875, p. 194). Schlegel’s restoration of the Solitaire (Album 
der Natwur, 1854, Aflev. ii. p. 344) is vitiated by his mistaken belief in the 
Struthious affinity of the Dididx. Still it is the work of an artist and an orni- 
thologist, which is more than can be said of one (produced, I believe, in France 
but by whom I know not) that has of late years obtained a popular circulation, 
as often happens with inferior work, and must be at least as wide of the mark as 
Leguat’s. 
